Summer Pool Project...

Ahh, Summer is here and it's that time of year when we spend lots of time outside. We're traveling, we're biking, we're taking our 11 year-old son to the pool...

Unfortunately, this constant motion affects my productivity on my silk embroidery. Pool water and silk fabric just don't mix...

In the Summer months, I need projects that are fun, portable and can withstand sweaty palms and the occasional splash.

I just dusted off my pool project from last year and was so delighted to see it again. I started this a few years back when I had taken an online class from Susan Sorrell through Joggles. This piece began as a pair of shorts on which I began some freeform embroidery.


I used DMC floss and started with the pink dashed line...that led me to make the purple swirls, then the yellow spikes, etc. Now, I see a need for green leaves everywhere and who knows where else my needle and thread will take me. I love the organic nature of this piece and that anything goes and it's OK...

Last summer, I opened up the inseams and made my shorts into a skirt. Now, I really like it. And this pink polka dot "flip" was just the thing I needed to cover up for the fact that the skirt didn't come together evenly in the back.


We spend a lot of time at the Patapsco State Park which is right down the street from where we live. There is a waterfall there and so I thought I would add it to my skirt as well. After all, the jeans were my hiking shorts before they became my pool skirt project. I think I see a fish jumping in all that churning water...

And I think a bird is perched just below this flowering branch...


And I love this mosaic paisley motif I created just because I was playing...

I had little bits of that beautiful fabric left over from my sewing. I snipped it into small mosaic pieces and then sewed it down with invisible thread with my sewing machine. I think you'll see that idea again.

So why not start a project where you can let the process guide you versus you guiding the process? Oh, the places you'll go...